› added 5 years ago

69

TIL the International Democrat Union, an international alliance of centre-right and conservative political parties, of which the German CDU is a memeber, is chaired by Stephen Harper, former Prime Minister of Canada.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

Z81RY TIL Baghdad possessed the world's largest book collection in the 9th century. By the 10th century, the city had become the largest city in the world surpassing even Constantinople with an estimated population between 1.2 million and 2 million.
OQ9Y TIL that Chinese courts have a 99.99% conviction rate (measured in 2009)
OGDYg TIL in 1999, a grass roots email campaign was able to get the 1988 song "Hangin' Tough" by New Kids On The Block onto MTV's "Total Request Live" show by encouraging people to vote for it. It landed at number 2 on the countdown.
nexPP TIL During the Cold War a Soviet Duty Officer whose job it was to report missile strikes to high command, dismissed satellite reports of five inbound missiles, saving the world from nuclear war.
JY6ml TIL that Rick Rescorla, the director of security at Morgan Stanley, saved the lives of nearly his whole company on 9/11 by making them evacuate the South Tower as soon as the North Tower was hit, which was against Port Authority orders